In a move that invites parody if not outright ridicule, the left-oriented Politico blog this week went after former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for fighting Iran-sponsored terrorism too aggressively. Well, duh!

In a week that saw “Fake News” become the number one topic of debate among mainstream journalists, Politico decided to double down on stupidity and serve up a prime example of fake news. The Washington post dutifully echoed the false accusations to give the lie a cloak of respectability not bestowed by Politico.

Giuliani’s alleged violation was participating in events sponsored by an anti-Iran exile group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI-MEK), a group that has widespread bipartisan support in Congress and that even John Kerry’s State Department admits has provided valuable intelligence on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The PMOI/MEK is the largest and most influential member of the coalition of anti-Mullah groups, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which acts as a government in exile while aiding pro-democracy forces inside Iran.

Many members of Congress in both political parties have supported the work of the PMOI/MEK, including Democrat Sen. Robert Menendez, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Rep. Ed Royce, and Sen. John McCain. Other prominent supporters include Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. I, too, while a member of Congress and also more recently, have participated in PMOI/MEK-sponsored conferences and can personally bear witness to the group’s anti-terrorism credentials.

The fallacious, unproven charges repeated by Politico‘s headline that the PMOI “killed Americans” is based largely on an incident inside Iran back in the 1970’s, before the Mullahs came to power and 25 years before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

There has never been a shred of evidence that any members of the current PMOI were involved in those events, yet the American left is now using those discredited allegations to smear one of our nation’s fiercest anti-terrorism warriors, Rudy Giuliani.

The charges against PMOI-MEK dredged up by Politico have been refuted by multiple investigations and are no longer given credence even by Obama’s State Department. For nearly two decades, those allegations arising from events in the 1970’s were used as a basis for listing the PMOI/MEK as a terrorist organization.

However, secret cables later revealed that the reason for that State Department listing in 1997 was Iran’s insistence on the listing as a condition for “normalizing” diplomatic relations.

In 2012, the State Department removed the group from that list because of the lack of evidence to justify it– and after a federal court agreed there was no basis under federal law for the erroneous listing.

So, why is the political left suddenly so interested in smearing Rudy Giuliani?

Could it have anything to do with Giuliani being one of two or three individuals on Donald Trump’s short list for Secretary of State? Do Democrats fear that the former NYC mayor might take the U.S. State Department in a new direction in opposing Iran’s vast network of financing for terrorist groups worldwide?

If the American news media establishment had an ounce of integrity, this Politico smear campaign against Giuliani would be laughed out of town. Instead, in an act of sheer desperation, prominent parts of the establishment media have joined the lynch mob. Obviously, this tells us more about the left’s motives and goals than it does about Giuliani.

The establishment media have run interference for Obama’s Iran policy for eight years, and apparently prefer Mitt Romney over Rudy Giuliani as President Trump’s Secretary of State. Hopefully, that might be enough to tip the scales on that imminent decision in Trump Tower.